10-S

Tennis is my favoritest game of all. It is the one game that I still play regularly today since schooling days. I kinda got into it by chance. I beleive I was about 12 years old then. My primary school was looking for volunteers to play and I somehow volunteered myself. The teacher gave me a letter, instructions and details of the tournament & location and that was it! Thinking back, I really don't know what crossed my mind when I volunteered myself as I don't recall watching much tennis on tv, and neither of my parents are into tennis or any sporting games for that matter. It was fated!

Anyhow, I went back and told my parents that I was going to represent my school in tennis and both of them panicked. They had good reason:

1. I have never played tennis in my life nor showed any interest in playing tennis
2. There were no tennis rackets lying about the house
3. WHAT IS TENNIS?

My Virgo Librarian dad did the fatherly thingy, took charge and pulled out the encyclopaedia! lol! We read from the entry "tennis" - duh! If I recall, it provided information about the court size, the equipment used (racket), and how the scoring is done. Boy, was that confusing; 15, 30, 40 and then came deuce scenarios and tie-breakers. While dad was taking a theorhetical approach, mom called up my cousin Vincent who played tennis and asked if I could borrow a racket from him. He gave me one, it was a WOODEN Dunlop! Gosh, its amazing, writing this I actually recall playing with a wooden racket when I started out.

Days before the tournament, dad made me eat beef satay. Why beef and why satay you ask? Well, it is a standard staple for me before tournaments and exams. He claims that beef provides energy and mental strength and I had it in satay form probably because there weren't many steakhouses back then and we were after all a middle income family.

The day of the tournament approached. I vaguely recalled attempting to do the overhead serve and I'm sure I double faulted more often than I can remember. Tournament was over two days, and a funny thing happened. I won and became the under-12 Selangor champion! How sad IS the state of our sports program?

Anyway, my interest for tennis grew since that day and when I went to secondary school, I finally got a real tennis coach in Toi (he's the brother of Zang Toi, the Malaysian designer). Tennis coaches then were quite rare and players coached under them usually have a similar style of play. I was more of a singles player but somehow got recruited by Selangor to play doubles. I used to actively play in the circuit and joined several other open tournaments, but today I am primarily a doubles recreational player.

My wish is that I will still be able to play tennis when I am past my 60s! 10S forever...